[lit-ideas] Re: Post the letter or burn it
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 10:54:48 EDT
In a message dated 8/12/2011 3:02:13 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Still it passeth my understanding how the square root of anything is
involved here. Also I am not sure you have understood my argument why "Post
the
letter or burn it" does not follow logically from "Post the letter": the
latter singular imperative does not imply that burning the letter (or
anything other than posting) is also morally valid. Next we'll be told "Feed
your
children" implies "Feed your children or burn them".
---
I think what is going on, and I've been on this elsewhere (at the Grice
Club?) is whether to accept Getzen (Natural deduction) for the introduction of
'or'. Grice would say that 'or' is OK as introduced in indicative
discourse:
My wife is in the kitchen; therefore, my wife is in the kitchen or in the
garden. (His example in 1961, Arist. Soc. Proc.)
In 1967, Hare, in Mind, applies Grice's argument to Alf Ross's objection.
"You can post the letter; therefore you can post the letter or you can burn
it".
So, the oddity is here as to the utterance of
"My wife is in the kitchen or in the garden", when utterer KNOWS it's in
the kitchen, say. Grice explains this oddity in terms of an unusual
implicature flouting the maxim, 'be as informative as you can'. It's a
'paradox' of
"or" that gets resolved when pragmatic factors are taken into question.
The same should proceed with "You can feed the children or burn them".
While indeed, from "You can feed the children" does follow "You can feed the
children or follow" it would be some illogical type who ERRADICATES 'or' from
the complex utterance, and infer from "You can feed the children or burn
them" that he can burn the children. Or something.
It's true that the square root comes in rather subtly. But the point is
that the introduction of 'or' should be neutral with respect to the force of
the utterances. If we represent p and q as the phrastics (or radixes) of
what is being said -- CHILDREN FED, CHILDREN BURNT --, then we add an
indication of mood. Children-fed seen as desirable object of an imperative
utterance, say; these mechanisms should be force-neutral.
Grice's campaign, believe it or not, is for the AEQUI-vocality of human
reason. He thinks that indicatives and imperatives follow the same patterns of
reason, and he thinks he is following Aristotle and Kant in thus thinking.
I agree.
In this respect, the truth-functor that "or" is is re-labelled
"satisfactoriness-functor", in that, in the case of "Feed the children!", or
"Bun the
children!", it is surely what A. J. P. Kenny calls the 'fiat' that is at
play. And so, the issue that the square-root device is meant to elucidate is
whether: "Feed the children!" or "Burn the children!"" is equivalent to
"Feed the children or burn them!" -- i.e. whether 'or' has scope inside or
outside the force-indicating devices that "!" represent. I tend to think that
it's best to see the whole thing as imperative with "or" as having minimal
scope. This may relate to De Morgan Laws, only in imperative contexts. Thus,
"Touch the monster and it will bite you", or "Touch the monster and you'll
regret it", perhaps includes an 'if', as Grice notes, and it's NOT the
conjunction of an imperative and an indicative (!p & .q), even if that is the
surface form of what you say. Or something like that. In any case, Grice
would consider that the 'if' (or 'if'/'or') utterance may be explained out of
an implicature of what you actually put forward, which is an
"and"-utterance. Or something like that.
Hare cites examples by Ryle on 'or' from the 1929 paper on Negation, Arist.
Soc. The example being that a train can go via Berwick or Crewe (I forget
the cities he mentions). The idea is that the utterance of a disjunction,
"The train can take the Berwick or the Crewe route", are paradoxical only at
the level of what is being expressed, but that this paradox can be
resolved in terms of pragmatic implicature. Or something.
Cheers,
Speranza
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